There’s a lot of understandable excitement online surrounding the announcement of Blackmagic’s successor to the five year-old Pocket Cinema Camera. In their enthusiasm, many are still repeating the same tired BS that Panasonic’s GH cameras produce garbage, plastic looking footage, and that this marks the beginning of the end of the GH5 and GH5s. I sincerely hope Panasonic can enable RAW HDMI out so we can take advantage of Apple’s Prores RAW, but the Pocket 4K does not in any way, shape or form suddenly consign the GH5 to the dumpster.
I think you are right. While the BMPCC4K should be good for specific situations, the GH5 still seems to be cranking out very nice footage (and I am a sony fanboi, not a panasonic fanboi). I think that many of the same people who say the GH5 has trashy footage wouldn’t be able to tell apart the footage from a GH5 with that from an alexa or a red (unless maybe in some extreme situations).
Sure, it would be great if the GH5 / GH5s can export RAW or ProRes from the HDMI port but I expect a lot of people are just going to continue to record to the 10-bit / 8-bit codec internally and will be happy with it.
I think that for the immediate future, the a7s III might be more in trouble if it continues with the Sony XAVC S 8-bit 100Mbs codec, even with 4K 60 (probably ESPECIALLY with 4k 60 because you are spreading out a lot of info over not that many megabits). Will Sony make a new codec available via firmware update for the a7 III and the a7s III??? They did that withe the a6000 when a firmware allowed it to record in XAVC S format.
Anyway, if I had an GH5 I sure wouldn’t be in any hurry to sell it. I might think twice about buying a GH5s if I was in the market for one, but that is because of the price differential and the lack of IBIS makes me want to compare it to the BMPCC4K, which also lacks IBIS.
If I had a GH5 though, I would look forward to September and maybe picking up a BMPCC4K and using GH5 on a Gimbal or handheld or shoulder rig and using the BMPCC4K on sticks.